UNITY TALKS SCATTER: As PPP and CPP Slug it Out

CPP Chairperson Samia Nkrumah

By Ekow Mensah

Once again the hopes of many people on the left of Ghana’s political spectrum for the unity of various political parties claiming the Nkrumah legacy have been dashed.

The Convention People Party (CPP) says it does not recognise the Nduom led Progressive Peoples Party  (PPP) as an Nkrumaist formation.

The PPP on the other hand has distanced itself from anything that sounds like Nkrumaist Socialism.

It says it is a pragmatic political party which is not interested in ideology and that it does “what works”.

The obviously needless controversy began when party stalwarts of the Peoples National  Convention (PNC) announced that plans were far advanced for the merger of all Nkrumaist political parties in Ghana.

These parties were named as the Convention Peoples Party, the Great Consolidated Peoples Party (GCPP) and the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP).

Incidentially, Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, the apparent leader of the PPP broke away from the CPP following a verbal war with party chairperson Samia Yaba Nkrumah.

Nduom and other CPP heavy weights who decamped with him formed the PPP with Nduom as its presidential candidate.

As soon as the announcement of an eminent merger was made, Kwame Jantuah, Deputy  General Secretary of the CPP flew over the lid and said his party is not begging Nduom to return.

 He said “the PPP hasn’t done anything to show that they want to unite with the CPP and vice versa. So as I speak to you now, it is not the PPP we are concentrating on, we are concentrating on the other parties.

PNC, GCPP and the like, if the PPP wants to come on board, they are certainly invited to come on board but at this moment, I don’t know that CPP has gone into any discussion with the PPP and by the way, I don’t think the PPP is a splinter party from the CPP just because Paa Kwesi Nduom was once the flagbearer, it looks as if our ideologies are totally different.”

This must be a slap in the face of Alhaji Ahmed Ramandan, National Chairman of the Peoples National Convention, who is obviously staking his future on the merger of the four parties.

In the last general elections none of the four parties could secure even one per cent of total votes cast.

 Since 1982, there have been several attempts to merge feuding Nkrumaist political parties.

However, there are still significant splits on the Nkrumaist front.

The failures to merge have always sprang from disagreements over symbols and ideological squabbles.

The current war of words between the CPP and the PPP is not unusual but it could be worrying for those who for once were becoming confident that the merger would click.

The PPP is claiming to be the biggest of all the small parties but the CPP also insists that it has representation in parliament.

Editorial

WITHER ARE WE BOUND?

It is the habit of government officials to talk up the economy even when it is in dire straits. “We are on course”, “the economy is buoyant”, “the foundations are solid”, etc, etc.

When therefore Ministers come to finally admit, albeit reluctantly, that the economy is “facing challenges”, then it means that things are really getting bad.

It is frightening when in the face of glaring opportunities to collect taxes, custom duties, etc, politicians sit by helplessly while public tax officials fail to collect taxes in the expectation that  their individual pockets would be lined by those expected to pay taxes.

We challenge people to go to any hardware shop in the country to buy paint or locks or anything, and see whether they would be provided with a VAT receipt.

We have in our possession, a recent document from the Commissioner of Customs which indicates that dutiable goods worth several billions of Cedis were allowed to be cleared from our ports on “permit” between January 2012 and June 2013 without paying duty. Up till now, the proper duties have not been paid. Yet the government is going abroad to borrow to finance infrastructure. What at all is happening in this country?

Was it Bob Marley who said “In the abundance of water, the   fool is thirsty” How very true is this for Ghana?

The government must sit up and look into this issue and ensure that the appropriate taxes are collected by those who are supposed to collect them. Otherwise , very soon, the wheel of state will grind precariously to a halt. We do not want a situation akin to the sinking of the Titanic. Everyone knew that the ship was sinking but there was nothing anyone could do about it. All that had to be done was to play a band while the ship sunk.

Wither are we bound? Forward or Backwards?

Thomas Sankara And The Assassination Of Africa’s Memory

Thomas Sankara

By Chika Ezeanya

Thomas Sankara was Burkina Faso’s president from August 1983 until his assassination on October 15, 1987. Perhaps, more than any other African president in living memory, Thomas Sankara, in four years, transformed Burkina Faso from a poor country, dependent on aid, to an economically independent and socially progressive nation.

Thomas Sankara began by purging the deeply entrenched bureaucratic and institutional corruption in Burkina Faso. He slashed the salaries of ministers and sold off the fleet of exotic cars in the president’s convoy, opting instead for the cheapest brand of car available in Burkina Faso, Renault 5. His salary was $450 per month and he refused to use the air conditioning units in his office, saying that he felt guilty doing so, since very few of his country people could afford it. Thomas Sankara would not let his portrait be hung in offices and government institutions in Burkina Faso, because every Burkinabe is a Thomas Sankara, he declared. Sankara changed the name of the country from the colonially imposed Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which means land of upright men.

Thomas Sankara’s achievements are numerous and can only be summarized briefly; within the first year of his leadership, Sankara embarked on an unprecedented mass vaccination program that saw 2.5 million Burkinabe children vaccinated. From an alarming 280 deaths for every 1,000 births, infant mortality was immediately slashed to below 145 deaths per 1,000 live births. Sankara preached self reliance, he banned the importation of several items into Burkina Faso, and encouraged the growth of the local industry. It was not long before Burkinabes were wearing 100% cotton sourced, woven and tailored in Burkina Faso. From being a net importer of food, Thomas Sankara began to aggressively promote agriculture in Burkina Faso, telling his country people to quit eating imported rice and grain from Europe, let us consume only what we ourselves control, he emphasized. In less than 4 years, Burkina Faso became self sufficient in food production through the redistribution of lands from the hands of corrupt chiefs and land owners to local farmers, and through massive irrigation and fertilizer distribution programs. Thomas Sankara utilized various policies and government assistance to encourage Burkinabes to get education. In less than two years as president, school attendance jumped from about 10% to a little below 25%, thus overturning the 90% illiteracy rate he met upon assumption of office.

Living way ahead of his time, within 12 months of his leadership, Sankara vigorously pursued a reforestation program that saw over 10 million trees planted around the country in order to push back the encroachment of the Sahara Desert. Uncommon at the time he lived, Sankara stressed women empowerment and campaigned for the dignity of women in a traditional patriarchal society. He employed women in several government positions and declared a day of solidarity with housewives by mandating their husbands to take on their roles for 24 hours. A personal fitness enthusiast, Sankara encouraged Burkinabes to be fit and was regularly seen jogging unaccompanied on the streets of Ouagadougou; his waistline remained the same throughout his tenure as president.

In 1987, during a meeting of African leaders under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity, Thomas Sankara tried to convince his peers to turn their backs on the debt owed western nations. According to him, debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa. It is a reconquest that turns each one of us into a financial slave. He would not request for, nor accept aid from the west, noting that welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing us, subjugating us, and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own economic, political, and cultural affairs. We chose to risk new paths to achieve greater well-being.

Thomas Sankara was a pan-Africanist who spoke out against apartheid, telling French President Jacques Chirac, during his visit to Burkina Faso, that it was wrong for him to support the apartheid government and that he must be ready to bear the consequences of his actions. Sankara’s policies and his unapologetic anti-imperialist stand made him an enemy of France, Burkina Faso’s former colonial master. He spoke truth to power fearlessly and paid with his life. Upon his assassination, his most valuable possessions were a car, a refrigerator, three guitars, motorcycles, a broken down freezer and about $400 in cash.

In death, Thomas Sankara’s burial place is unkempt and filled with weeds. Few young Africans have ever heard of Thomas Sankara. In reality, it is not the assassination of Thomas Sankara that has dealt a lethal blow to Africa and Africans; it is the assassination of his memory, as manifested in the indifference to his legacy, in the lack of constant reference to his ideals and ideas by Africans, by those who know and those who should know. Among physical and mental dirt and debris lie Africa’s heroes while the younger generations search in vain for role models from among their kind. Africans have therefore, internalized self-abhorrence and the convictions of innate incapability to bring about transformation. Transformation must run contrary to the African’s DNA, many Africans subconsciously believe.

Africans are not given to celebrating their own heroes, but this must change. It is a colonial legacy that was instituted to establish the inferiority of the colonized and justify colonialism. It was a strategic policy that ensured that Africans celebrated the heroes of their colonial masters, but not that of Africa. Fifty years and counting after colonialism ended, Africa’s curriculum must now be redrafted to reflect the numerous achievements of Africans. The present generation of Africans is thirsty, searching for where to draw the moral, intellectual and spiritual courage to effect change. The waters to quench the thirst, as other continents have already established, lies fundamentally in history - in Africa’s forbears, men, women and children who experienced much of what most Africans currently experience, but who chose to toe a different path. The media, entertainment industry, civil society groups, writers, institutions and organizations must begin to search out and include African role models, case studies and examples in their contents.

For Africans, the strength desperately needed for the transformation of the continent cannot be drawn from World Bank and IMF policies, from aid and assistance obtained from China, India, the United States or Europe. The strength to transform Africa lies in the foundations laid by uncommon heroes like Thomas Sankara; a man who showed Africa and the world that with a single minded pursuit of purpose, the worst can be made the best, and in record time, too.

Source: Ocnus.net 2013

JFK Assassination: The Facts and Theories

US President J.F. Kennedy

By David Krajicek

Introduction

On this most Americans can agree: President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

But four decades later, just about every other detail of the assassination of the charismatic, photogenic politician is subject to debate.

Was the CIA behind the murder? Fidel Castro? The Mafia? The FBI? LBJ? The Russians? Martians?

Or were Lee Oswald, the accused assassin, and Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer, simply "two lone nuts" who managed to carry out a pair of inconceivable shootings?

"For most Americans, it's a kind of a parlor game," says Professor John McAdams, who teaches a course on the assassination at Marquette University in Milwaukee. "People will say to me, 'Well, what's your theory on who did it?' And they look so disappointed when I say, 'Oswald did it all by himself.'"

That, of course, was also the conclusion of the presidential commission appointed a week after the assassination. Headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, the commission announced its Oswald-acted-alone findings on September 24, 1964.

On that date, vigorous conspiracy theories commenced, and the whodunit debate has roiled ever since.

"The Kennedy assassination really has achieved mystic significance," McAdams, 58, tells the Crime Library. In this era when conspiracy theories abound, says McAdams, "The greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory."

McAdams says Oliver Stone's film "J.F.K." stirred the conspiracy pot by adding gravitas to Prosecutor Jim Garrison's fringe theory on the case. The movie still draws newcomers into the obsessive world of Kennedy assassination enthusiasts.

On one side are the conspiracy theorists, on the other the so-called debunkers. They argue with a fervor normally reserved for politics and religion.

Scores of books have been written about the assassination, and perhaps a hundred Web sites are dedicated to the subject, including one vast archive maintained by McAdams.

In these arenas, conspiracy theorists throw out questions, and debunkers try to respond.
Some questions are broad: Why did the Secret Service remove President Kennedy's body from Dallas and transport it to Washington? Others are terribly specific, such as: "Why is the upper part of the right eye's socket skull orbit missing from the X-ray that is supposed to be JFK's?"

Dave Reitzes, 34, a writer who lives in Delaware, has been on both sides.

"I was drawn into it by Oliver Stone's movie in 1991," he writes in an e-mail interview. "I was a rabid conspiracy theorist for eight or nine years, then did a hard about-face when I began to realize how wrong my thinking had been."

He says the conspiracies are propelled by disbelief that 10th-grade dropout Oswald--"a silly little Communist," in the reported words of Jackie Kennedy—could have killed a president; by a distrust of government, and by the poor work of mainstream journalists and historians who allow questionable theories to go largely unchallenged.

He adds, "The truth is available to anyone who cares to study up on it. But those who fail to differentiate between evidence that is verifiable and the more popular varieties -- i.e., unsubstantiated eyewitness claims, hearsay, rumor, and supposition -- are going to forever doom themselves to chasing shadows, much like the hunters of flying saucers, Bigfoot, etc."

Reitzes says the conspiracy theories can be withering.

"Of late, I confess I've found it hard to maintain much interest," he says. "The seemingly endless springs of gullibility grow tiresome, and the theories certainly aren't getting any more persuasive. If anything, they get more outlandish as the years go by."

One prominent conspiracy theorist, Barb Junkkarinen, agrees that far-out conjectures get in the way.

"Unfortunately, what gets all the attention are the nuts on both sides," she says. "Everyone (in the media) runs to them, and the rest of us suffer the consequences."

Junkkarinen, 52, who lives near Portland, Ore., has a particular interest and expertise in the medical aspects of the case, including bullet-wound details.

She doubts Oswald shot Kennedy. She believes instead that he was set up as a foil to a larger conspiracy, which was covered up by a panicked United States government. Junkkarinen says she was drawn into the JFK assassination long before Oliver Stone's film.(She admits it is an obsession; her e-mail name is "barbjfk," and she notes with a laugh that her husband recently gave her a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, the brand found near the assassin's window roost at the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas.)

"For me, I love a mystery," Junkkarinen says. "I grew up reading Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. I think it was that and the medical evidence that sucked me into it."

She is an active member of a Web-based Kennedy assassination discussion group, attends JFK conferences and sometimes writes about the Kennedy evidence.

"A lot of people want to place blame for who is responsible," she says. "I'm not sure that can be done, and I'm not sure it matters. I think for me, if someone would come forward and say, 'There was a conspiracy and there was a cover-up, and now it's such a mess it can never be untangled.' That would satisfy me."

And why does it matter at this point?

"I think it matters because Americans expect and deserve a true history, and I don't think we have that," Junkkarinen says. "That's the bottom line: History should be true."

McAdams, the Marquette professor, says Jack Ruby is largely responsible for fueling the suspicions of people like Junkkarinen.

"Ruby did a tremendous amount to perpetrate the conspiracy theories," he says. "Depriving American history and the American people of a Lee Harvey Oswald trial was a terrible thing."

But various government authorities can be blamed, as well.

First, Dallas police allowed Ruby access to Oswald at least twice. The department led a shoddy investigation in other ways, as well, calling into question the chain of evidence. The city's police chief leaped to the quick conclusion that Oswald was the assassin, then went before the media to announce his finding.

The Secret Service and Kennedy's top aides spirited the president's body out of Dallas just 100 minutes after he was declared dead. In Washington, a bumbling team of doctors performed a hack-job autopsy on what was perhaps the most precious corpse in modern American history.

The fumbled Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the report that the Kennedy administration had contracted Mafia assassins to kill Fidel Castro—"operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean," in the words of Lyndon Johnson--gave legs to the notion that the United States would do nefarious business with just about anyone for just about any purpose.

Suspicious doings, polluted evidence, the credibility gap, striking coincidences: For many, these factors make doubting seem more sensible than believing.

Junkkarinen, a doubter, uses the analogy of a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, which is complicated enough. But the box of the JFK assassination puzzle has 2,000 pieces. To solve it, you must first figure out which 1,000 pieces don't fit.

On the other hand, McAdams, the believer, says too many conspiracy theorists flyspeck just one inaccurate piece of the puzzle, then use that error as a basis to dismiss the entire Kennedy investigation.

The tactic has been known to work in the contemporary world of criminal justice: "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."

KSA, Israel stuck in war mindset

Iran President Hassan Rouhani

Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf oil sheikhdoms are stuck in a war bunker mentality towards Iran.

This will prove to be a serious impediment to a possible diplomatic deal between Tehran and the West to break the 10-year nuclear deadlock.

But the more troubling questions are: from who, what and where does this war mindset towards Iran originate?

Cordial, businesslike discussions this week in Geneva between Iran and Western powers appeared to break the ice that has frozen relations for the past decade, since when the United States and its allies began accusing Tehran of secretly building a nuclear bomb.

Following discussions in the Swiss capital, there was unusual high praise from the United States and the European Union for Iran’s presentation on how to resolve the nuclear issue.

 senior US administration official was quoted in the Financial Times as saying of the two-day meeting that Washington “never had such intense, detailed, straightforward, candid conversations with the Iranian delegation.“ He added: “I would say we really are beginning that type of negotiation where one could imagine that you could possibly have an agreement.”

So, the scene is seemingly set for more diplomatic thawing in a follow-up meeting next month between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany - this time perhaps at the full foreign minister level.

However, take note of these countercurrents. In the same week of cordial negotiations in Geneva, the Israeli regime and the Persian Gulf monarchies were going ballistic - literally.

There seems little doubt that any positive movement in diplomacy between Iran and the US in the coming weeks and months will be met likewise with louder banging on the war drums.

“We can’t surrender the option of a preventive strike,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his parliament, as Iranian-Western discussions were getting underway in Geneva.

At the same time, Israel’s Air Force was mounting war exercises. Such exercises are of course planned far in advance, but the latest maneuvers laid emphasis on simulated long-distance flights “for possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” reported The Jerusalem Post.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced in recent days that they were seeking nearly $11 billion-worth of advanced US-made missiles, including air-launched cruise missiles. More significant than the actual weapons purchase is the rationale behind it.

The Associated Press reported that the Saudi and Emirati orders were motivated “to stay ahead of claimed military strides by rival Iran.” It added: “Gulf nations regularly spend billions of dollars on US military equipment and upgrades amid lingering regional tensions with Iran.”

Evidently, the Israeli and Persian Gulf Arab regimes are apoplectic at the prospect of normalizing relations between Iran and the US and its Western allies.

If such normalization was to take place and the crippling sanctions on Iran’s prodigious economy were lifted, then the already impressive regional stature of Iran can only but grow even more robust. That outcome is anathema to both the Zionist regime and the House of Saud, as well as the latter’s Wahhabi cronies in the Gulf.

This is because Iran, through its legitimate political discourse and development, exposes the despotism of these regimes. In a very real way, Iran poses an existential threat to Israel and the House of Saud. The threat is not through war and unlawful subversion, but simply because Iran provides an alternative political model as a nation state, one that by its very nature undermines the illegitimate anti-democratic foundations of Israel and the oil monarchies.

With zero-sum mentality, the Israeli and Arab dictatorships must therefore always be in a state of war towards Iran, talking up military threats and accusations of clandestine subversive plots. Normal relations and peace in the Middle East region are fatal to the existence of these rogue states, whose foundations would crumble if democratic freedom were to take hold.

Indicative of this mentality were the calls this week by the Saudi ambassador to the UN, Abdullah al-Muallimi, who told Al Arabiya TV that “Iran should not play a key role” in the forthcoming Geneva II peace talks over Syria. The Saudi diplomat claimed that this was because Iran “interferes in the affairs of Arab countries” through the “Hezbollah terrorist organization.” ]

While it is amusing to watch the Israeli and Arab warmongers hyperventilate over improved diplomatic relations between Iran and the Western states, this reactionary seizure is nonetheless indicative of an underlying structural problem that will clash with future negotiations.

The West’s standoff with Iran did not start 10 years ago over an alleged nuclear threat. The West has been in aggression mode towards Iran ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 - dating back 34 years. ]

This is because the ongoing dispute has nothing to do with nuclear technology. It is about a competing political vision; between whether a country’s natural resources are primarily for the benefit of the people in that country, or for the enrichment of foreign capitalists.

It is no coincidence that 1979 marked a watershed in Middle East relations. The US and its Western allies then began warning of the “Iranian threat” and the “Shia Crescent” holding sway over the region.

Of course, the despotic regimes in Israel and the Persian Gulf willingly obliged, out of self-preservation, in this ideological war against Tehran.

The US and its Western allies thus share the responsibility for the systematic hostility that today indelibly defines Israeli and Saudi perception and policy towards Iran.

In negotiations between Iran and the Western states, individual politicians may be amenable to reason and dialogue. It is human nature. But we need to differentiate between the personal effect and what comprises the all-important structural policy.

One of those structural interests determining policy is the weapons industry. The US economy, as with other Western states, has become increasingly dominated by behemoth weapons companies. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and British Aerospace play a crucial role in election fundraising, trade balances, revenues, stock markets, banks, jobs and illicit vote buying.

In short, war is not just good for capitalist business. In many ways, in today’s de-industrialized Western economies, war and the means of war is the only business.

Individual politicians in close discussion forums can appear reasonable and conducive to normal relations. That can generate upbeat headlines for a while. But a state’s policy is not set at this level.

It is the overbearing influence of corporate power on the White House, Congress, as well as lobby groups, which determine the state’s policy.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are war states, and war states in particular towards Iran. But these warmongers are not isolated anomalies that can be easily dismissed for the sake of diplomacy.

As we saw this week with the lucrative American weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the war exercises conducted by Israel, the aggression of these regimes is not some detachable aberration. It is a symptom of the underlying aggression that is structural to US economics and foreign policy.

Diplomatic success for Iran is long overdue and eminently deserved. Perhaps even individual Western diplomats are beginning to recognize that. But the policy of the US and its allies towards Iran is deeply hostile in a way that is beyond the smiles and handshakes of political personalities.

Israel’s ‘underground’ nuke arsenal

In February 2013, Grant Smith of the Middle East Policy Institute and Anti-War.Com published a story attacking Walter Pincus of the Washington Post for accusing the Army Corps of Engineers of supporting Israel’s nuclear program.

Smith’s proof of the innocence of Israel and the Army Corps of Engineers and his indictment of Pincus for an anti-Israel story is cited here:

“Pincus did not respond to an immediate email request for citations of USACE publications detailing “facilities for handling nuclear weapons,” but a January 4, 2013 Freedom of Information Act request to USACE Humphreys Engineer Support Center in Alexandria requesting documents summarizing "its role in building nuclear weapons handling facilities in Israel” was swiftly answered.

USACE’s response was unusually comprehensive. “This office is responsible for administering requests involving USACE Headquarters. The USACE Europe District is the office responsible for projects involving Israel. I have coordinated with the Europe District and have been informed that none of the facilities that USACE has been involved with were nuclear weapons handling facilities; therefore I will not be requesting that a document search be conducted.”

Grant Smith’s career as a journalist has been based on debunking government denials. In fact, it is harder to catch the Department of Defense actually telling the truth. Everything we now know as fact, the kidnappings and renditions, the torture, NSA spying, and, most recently, claims of Assad’s use of Sarin in Syria was “official truth” at one time.

Suddenly, a standard government denial outweighs a classified source Walter Pincus of the Washington Post had to push past “fact checkers,” a legal department and a dozen editors to get published at one of the most conservative media outlets in the world.

Did we just learn, not just that the DOD is funding Israel’s nuclear program but that independent investigative journalists may well have a role in protecting these dangerous and illegal programs?

Who Is What?

Smith’s article is curious. It is nearly impossible to see it as other than “cheerleading” for Israel and a poorly researched cover up. The theme of the article is hardly “anti-war,” quite the opposite and provides extensive cover for Israel’s childish denials of the nuclear capabilities it continually threatens the world with.

Veterans Today had received its own information about these facilities, multiple underground bunkers, nuclear-hardened, intended to provide command and control and needed support for Israel’s strategic command, their “nuclear command.”

Our own investigation showed the facilities to provide direct command and control for nuclear forces and, in one case, include hardened facilities for unspecified “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that included materials handling equipment exclusively used to deploy nuclear weapons.

Washington Post

Veterans Today had initially broken the story based on Pentagon sources. However, Walter Pincus, of the Washington Post, in November 2012 wrote the following:

“Over the years, the Corps has built underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons (though Israel does not admit having such weapons), command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators, according to Corps publications.”

For those who are unaware of such things, any information the US has regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal is highly classified. The US effort to follow Israel’s weapons developments is handled through our embassy in Tel Aviv. It is the primary job of our attaché at the embassy to monitor this.

Colonel James B. Hanke, US Army Special Forces (ret) had been our attaché under Ambassador Pinkerton. Hanke oversaw us intelligence gathering inside Israel and was tasked with monitoring their nuclear capabilities.

Policies during the Clinton era that put “America first” ended with the Bush (43) presidency.

Thus, when the Army Corps of Engineers began building huge underground facilities, 5 in total, in Israel, those intelligence officers remaining from the “America first” era were shocked.

You see, there were no provision made for inspection of these facilities once they were turned over. Moreover, as Israel is a major nuclear power, it would be inconceivable that a “strategic command center” would not control “strategic weapons.”

However, the leaked classified information that Pincus would have used and never could have provided sources for out of journalistic ethics, had “shopped” this very real scandal to other publications. Only Veterans Today and the Washington Post printed it.

Smith Gets It Right Also

To make this all even more theatrical and confusion, Grant Smith very rightly cites a 2006 Walter Pincus story defending Steve Rosen and Keith Weismann of AIPAC, the Israel lobby organization, against spying charges.

These charges were later dropped on the basis of “national security.”

Pincus defends Rosen and Weisman’s acquisition and transfer to Israel of nuclear secrets as “freedom of the press,” quoting several supporting sources, all of which are AIPAC controlled.

Veterans Today editor, Gwyneth Todd, while a member of the National Security Council under Bush (43), met with FBI agents and cooperated in FBI surveillance under the orders of Condoleezza Rice, her direct superior.

A much larger espionage ring including top Bush White House insiders was discovered and volumes of evidence were accumulated including hour after hour of tape recorded confessions.

Smith, historically a strong critic of AIPAC, burns Pincus, rightly so, for a pitiful 2006 story using biased sources to defend Israeli spying on the US.

Here, in 2013, however, we find Grant Smith doing almost exactly what he has exposed Pincus for and, ironically, does so in the very same story. Are we not supposed to notice?

Smith’s position for analysis is that Israel uses press assets like Pincus who publish stories on US aid to Israel’s nuclear programs to cover up even worse Israeli abuses.

“Hinting that the U.S. government has an ongoing official -though deeply secret- role in helping Israel develop and deploy nuclear weapons is a line periodically pushed by Israel lobby partisans when uncomfortable facts about questionable funding flows from the U.S. or illicit material and technology diversions arise.”

Our own analysis is different than Smith’s. US complicity in taxpayer funding for Israel’s “ambiguous” nuclear program is, as we see it, a “red line.”

This is something that can end funding to Israel and evidence of these underground facilities exists, though highly classified.

Moreover, America’s willingness to build “Cheyenne mountain” type facilities, not just defensive but a nuclear hardened “war room,” a command and control facility in response to an Iranian ‘nuclear threat’ even Smith himself has always admitted was imaginary, is a fraud of the highest order.

What is telling is Smith’s use of materials, an unclassified document received through Freedom of Information, which would and could never adequately address something at this security level.

Simply put, when the US spends billions to build underground facilities and makes no provision as to how they are used and simply gives them to a government that has waged aggressive war against its neighbors, a nuclear power that issues threats constantly, far more than North Korea, it should be assumed all of these facilities are nuclear facilities.

Then again, there are the classified sources that confirmed weapons storage bays, nuclear operations centers and more.

What Smith never mentioned is what, exactly, these facilities are being built for if not to store and deploy nuclear weapons?

If the US believes, as they stated in the document Smith relies on, that Israel would never use them for “nuclear purposes,” then how is the US government assuring that?

America continually demands to examine every facility in Syria and Iran but not Israel.

Do we simply believe Israel? Nobody else does.

Were Smith to be right to the extent his curiosity has allowed, he would still be wrong. It is obvious the US is building massive strategic capabilities in Israel without consulting Congress or the American people.

These are, minimally, a threat to the region and the world.

Even if reports requested were “believable,” they aren’t comprehensively so. Even if these facilities weren’t directly tied to nuclear missile silos, as high level Department of Defense sources have leaked, they could be and certainly would be.

Israel never promised they wouldn’t. We never asked to check.

Nobody asked anything, we were simply too busy shoveling dirt over the problem.

The immorality of Australia's prostitution laws 

By Murray Hunter

Australia's handling of prostitution is often cited as a success model, particularly the framework adopted by the State of Victoria.

In the 1970s illegal brothels masqueraded as massage parlors and street walkers proliferated the street areas around the notorious suburb of Melbourne, St Kilda. Victoria was the first state to legalize brothel based prostitution through the Melbourne and Metropolitan Planning Scheme with the objectives of controlling industry growth, reducing illegal activities, preventing criminal elements infiltrating the industry, preventing child prostitution, and making street walkers safe.

The Victorian model allowed licensed commercial brothels regulated under the 1994 Prostitution Control Act which became known as the Sex Work Act, and local government planning regulations. In addition single owner managed brothels with one additional sex worker were also allowed and exempt from the need to obtain a license under the Sex Worker Act. However these small brothels still needed local government planning approvals which were almost impossible to obtain, requiring appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, needing expensive legal representation.

The Sex Work Act also allowed escort agencies which could provide sexual services at customer premises, or just recently at hotels, although street walkers were still illegal under the Act.

Under this legislative regime, Consumer Affairs Policy of the Victorian Government gives the impression that this $500 million per year legal industry with over 3 million customers is a safe and reasonable job for women in Victoria. In Victoria prostitution is considered a consensual act between two people where one is used sexually by the other. In addition 'pimping' is legalized by allowing non-sex workers who own and manage licensed brothels to benefit financially from prostitution. Sex workers are considered service providers without the guaranteed pay, protection, and benefits workers that other industries are afforded.

This situation appears to be institutionalized by the attitudes of the peak sex worker association, the Scarlet Alliance which sees prostitution as a legitimate occupation, parallel with the interests of the commercial brothel owners, who as mentioned are not sex workers.

This situation in the state of Victoria leaves sex workers as an exploited group by both government and commercial interests, where the sex workers themselves are seen as mere sex objects who generate commercial revenue. The current prostitution laws in Victoria maintain the industry as a vocation of oppression against individual sex workers who are unable to empower themselves and given no resources to cope with the trauma and violence of the job.

There is indeed an urgent need to put workers in charge of their own industry, so they can be free of the shackles of legitimized 'pimpism' that the Sex Work Act enshrines.

Industry statistics indicate that only 10% of commercial brothel licenses are held by women. Through various legal devices to flaunt the law, six major entities appear to control the legal industry.

High licensing fees, extremely high capital requirements required to meet planning regulations to develop a brothel, and a tendency of local councils to reject new applications, which require expensive legal representation make it almost impossible for sex workers to own and operate a legal brothel. In addition, the economics of the industry really require operators to own the premises they operate from, because the owners of premises with planning approvals charge sex operators who wish to lease these premises exorbitant rents, allowing only marginal returns to the operators.

Obtaining the necessary permits to operate exempt brothels from the Sex Work Act are so difficult, most sex workers opt to open illegal brothels under the guise of a massage parlor, thereby going outside the law. They run the risk if prosecuted of having all their assets forfeited by the state, a penalty primarily reserved for drug trafficking. In addition the proprietors of licensed commercial brothels proactively seek to close down these illegal brothels, due to the competition they give the legal industry, as most customers tend to visit both legal and illegal brothels. This brings a situation where the legalized pimps of the industry are the worst enemy of the weak and unprotected sex workers.

Those sex workers who opt to work within licensed commercial brothels usually work 12-14 hour shifts where up to 60% of money paid by clients goes to the brothel. The sex workers are given no assistance in handling the specific occupational issues related to their work by the licensed brothels.

Neither the government, sex worker peak body, or brothel recognize the social and economic inequality of sex workers. A recent Consumer Affairs of Victoria Report into the Brothel Industry concluded that the major driver for women entering the industry was financial need. Prostitution was particularly attractive to single mothers, students, and young indigenous people, where opportunities for other work are limited by the lack of training and skills. The young are particularly vulnerable.

Although those advocating the legalization of prostitution highlight issues like job flexibility and higher financial returns than other forms of work, the physical and emotional costs, violence and stigma are huge costs for the individuals concerned. Sex work can be extremely destructive upon a person's sexuality, where dissociation from mind and body is often necessary to cope, which can lead to alcohol and drug dependency. Many sex workers have deep psychological issues that need urgent attention, not to mention assistance in financial planning and management. Prostitution in many cases is a route to poverty rather than out of poverty, often inducing sex workers into pastimes like gambling as a means to cope with the stresses of handling up to 20 customers a day.

These are areas of concern totally missing from the Victorian approach to prostitution. Legislation that was seen as a solution, now appears to be the cause of the problem.

There is a deep assumption in the Victorian law that society needs to be protected from sex workers as they are social misfits who shouldn't be seen. This assumption makes it so difficult for sex workers to acquire licenses, that they must flaunt the law and operate illegal brothels to survive, with the consequent legal risks attached. Most importantly the law is keeping these 25,000 people on the fringe of society where they are open to violence and exploitation, where sex workers have the mere status as sex objects for a multi-million dollar industry. The laws have allowed male domination in what should be and industry primarily operated by females. The laws have created legitimate pimps who profit off the earnings of prostitution, where other models like setting up sex worker cooperatives could have been considered.

The laws have protected licensed brothels and made illegal brothels owned and operated by sex workers themselves vulnerable and marginal. The barriers to entry are now so high, sex workers cannot aspire to operate their own premises legally.

The immorality of the Victorian prostitution laws lies in that they allow others to exploit vulnerable sex workers. The only thing the Sex Work Act has achieved is to replace the word pimp with the phrase 'legitimate business operator', which has inflicted unnecessary pain and suffering on the victims of the sex industry, the sex workers themselves.

Any legislation that empowers employers over employees should be subject to social scrutiny, and this should also be the case in the sex industry. With the state of Victoria allowing continued exploitation of the vulnerable in society, one has to ask on what moral grounds the Premier of Victoria Denis Napthine refuses to review the State's sex laws.